Dear God, I Can't Bear Blue Stain on my Carpet, Flies Baked in My Bread, and Things Like That!

Monday turned into a blue Monday.

After directing Hannah to get the vacuum to sweep up a pile of blue craft sand spilled on the carpet in the schoolroom, I later returned from supervising other things to discover a blue stain on the carpet!

She had obediently vacuumed, but when some sand remained,

she had gotten a wet rag and started to try to clean the rest up that way.

 Well, you guessed it.

It didn't clean up very well. 

And I sort of panicked.

Jonathan, who happened to still be home, suggested vinegar, but blue still stayed.

Goo Gone got more out, but the blue is there--probably forever.

 I had to try to stop to ask why I was so freaked out
and on the verge of tears.
What was so horrible about a blue stain on the carpet?

Was it really about a blue stain--or about a trigger?

Did it trigger the feelings of intense shame I felt growing up in a home that was never

company ready?

The shame when relatives or the pastor or somebody else showed up and--

we flew around in an impossible effort to make the place presentable?

 

And then there is the shame of what your house looks like

when you hear teaching and preaching about how God wants excellence in the area of how we keep our homes and parsonages and churches and yards and schools and so on. 

 

God said, "Let everything be done decently and in order," didn't He?

And blue stains on the carpet aren't exactly decent, are they?

Plus, you try so hard to teach your children respect of property. 

Like, No eating anywhere but the kitchen,

and

No dirty feet on the sofa and

Treat furniture with care, and Nothing but clean hands on the piano.

(That means no toy cars running up and down the keys.)

Somehow that stain was driving me up the wall with the sheer

permanence of it,

the fear that every time I walked into that room, 

I would see this hopeless blue stain.  

Till I realized that I could choose.

 

I could choose to fret and stew every time I came into that room,

just fret and stew forever and ever Amen.

Or I could choose to decide that we had done our best,

and the stain was just still there,

and so, we would go on with life,

blue stain and all.

Not everyone can buy a new carpet every time something spills on it.

You can't always control the blue or yellow or purple stains that end up on it--

or the melted triangular shape that happened years ago when the hot iron landed on the living room--yes, the living room floor. . 

And just because you have a stain and melted spot on your carpet

doesn't mean you are a bad person

or that you never taught your kids anything about keeping a home decent.

You can be the most efficient housekeeper and homemaker in the world,

and blue sand will still spill on your carpet,

and sparks from your woodstove will still land on the vinyl or carpet,

and when you have kids, 

forget about shampooing the carpet till the last one heads out the door to college. 

And you can be  the most spotless housekeeper in the world,

and the best cook,

and still end up with flies baked into your bread.

The baker was horrified!

And you can choose to gag and gasp and gurgle and gulp

forever and ever Amen,

or you can flick the silly fly out of its snug bed of warm bread dough

and go blithely on with life.

You have to admit,

not everything in life is picture perfect.

Not everything is going to be the shape it's supposed to be.

There are some things that are just going to be sort of weird

forever and ever Amen.

And God is so much more interested in an excellent spirit

and an excellent attitude

than in a perfect picture

or a perfect carpet without any stains in the children's room,

or super clean vegetables just out of the garden.

There's something about learning patience in the spin cycles of life

when you are soaked in responsibilities

and drained of energy

and spun dry of inspiration.

Learning the patience that does your best

and lets go of the rest.

And it isn't patience, either, to just be the kind of person who stays calm, cool and collected 

sort of automatically--

the kind of person who usually sits there and lets someone else take care of the problem
because that is easier than taking personal responsibity
like the person took who is actually doing the work and cleaning up the  mess
and taking care of the problem.
Patience is not about sitting there quietly letting someone else take responsibility
and then criticizing that person for the action they took.
It is about swallowing how you feel when you would rather be doing something besides taking care of one more problem in a big series of spills, stains, lost items, and grouchy attitudes.
Patience is learned, not inborn. 

********** 

So you forget about the blue stain, and walk to that cottonwood tree for the first ever picnic  lunch

with your husband on a weekday in that particular spot

just because you are yearning for trees and leaves to crunch on this autumn.

Smiling at the little boy that comes on the run when he and his brothers get home from mowing

the church lawn.

Because we really can bear a blue stain on the floor and flies baked into our bread

as long as there is love in the home!